If God is love, why is there evil in the world?

 Three Lessons From the Book of Job

The book of Job raises many questions. Why did Job have to suffer? What can we learn from Job's suffering? Let’s take a closer look at three things this book can teach us.

Job was an extraordinary person. He is described by God as being a “blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). The book of Job describes a long and difficult trial he experienced. His life continues to serve as an example of perseverance for Christians (James 5:11).

The story begins by describing an encounter between Satan and God. God asks if he’s considered Job’s righteousness (Job 1:8; 2:3). Satan responds by accusing Job of only serving God because of the blessings he had received (Job 1:9-11). God allows Satan to take these physical blessings away, beginning with Job’s livelihood and children (Job 1:14-17, 18-19) and then his health (Job 2:7-8).

As Job’s going through all this, three of his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, come to “mourn with him, and to comfort him” (Job 2:11). A series of conversations eventually ensues, beginning with Job cursing the day he was born (Job 3:1).

His friends then share their opinions of Job’s trial. They reason that such a calamity comes from God upon the wicked, and they accuse Job of having done something evil to deserve all this. As the accusations escalate, Job asserts his total innocence, maintaining that he has been unjustly afflicted with this suffering.

So what can we learn from Job in the Bible? 

Lesson 1: We don’t have all the answers

Job’s friends were sure that his sins had caused his suffering. They presented Job with many reasons they believed he had brought this ordeal on himself. They were certain they were right. But after God intervened, He rebuked the friends for speaking falsely about Him and the situation (Job 42:7).

At times we, like Job, don’t know why God allows certain situations to happen.And Job didn’t have all the answers either. At one point he cursed the day he was born—which questioned God’s providence (Job 3:3). As his friends suggested the sins that may have caused his suffering, Job responded by overly justifying himself and his own righteousness (Job 13:22-24; 32:2).

At times we, like Job, don’t know why God allows certain situations to happen. We often ask “why” when we see (or experience) intense suffering. We have to remember that we won’t always discover the answers—at least not immediately. In those times we must remember that “the secret things belong to the LORD our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Lesson 2: Comfort those who suffer

When Job was at his lowest point, what did he really need? Was it correction? Was it theories on the cause of his suffering?

No.

What Job needed the most was comfort. Job even called his friends “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). Instead of comforting, they added more grief to his situation. What he needed was friends who would increase his faith in God’s providence, pray with him and encourage him to hang in there. When people are suffering, sometimes the best thing we can do is say nothing. There are times when just being there is the best comfort we can give. His friends were at their best when they first arrived and silently mourned with him (Job 2:13).

The Bible advises that sometimes the wisest course of action is keeping silent (Proverbs 11:12; 17:28). We should learn how to “comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:4).

If you'd like to learn more about showing comfort to others, read "Lessons From Barnabas, Son of Encouragement". 

Lesson 3: Suffering should cause us to search for answers

It’s natural to ask “why” when we suffer. Why is this happening? How long will this continue?

The conversation between Job and his friends went back and forth until God finally intervened and questioned Job. God did not answer Job’s questions directly, nor did He provide a reason for his suffering, instead He described the wonders of creation to show Job just how small he was. This taught Job to see himself in comparison with God and realize that God’s wisdom was beyond his comprehension.

He needed to really learn that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). Job repented not just for what he had said, but for what he was (Job 42:5-6).

Though the world is full of suffering, God has a future planned that’s too wondrous for humans to fully comprehend (1 Corinthians 2:9). When we are suffering, we should focus not only on God’s power and goodness, but on the future He has in store for those who endure “to the end” (Matthew 24:13).

Women Techsters Fellowship 2021 Coding Program for women across Africa

Application Deadline: February 27th 2021 

Women Techsters Fellowship is a year-long coding program for young girls and women across Africa. For the next ten years, multiple cohorts will be executed over a 12-month timeline using standardized learning curriculums across five learning tracks. The training is for three months, supported by a six-month internship and enrollment into a mentorship program.

The Fellowship Program is an opportunity for women to upskill and build the capacity needed to access decent work opportunities. The Fellowship will commence on Monday, 8th March 2021 and will run for a year. The first 3 months will be for the technical training, followed by a 2-week soft skill training, and a six-month internship program. 

The learning paths for this training are: 

1. Software Development 

2. Product Design (UI/UX) 

3. Cybersecurity 

4. Product Management 

5. Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Engineering

Click here to apply: http://bit.ly/2NfILNS

IUBH Scholarship Initiative: Save up to 80% and kick-start your international career with a European degree in 2021!

Do you want to start a degree but need studies that fit around your schedule? 

IUBH University of Applied Sciences provides flexible study models to help you learn the way you want to.

IUBH provides quality programmes for Bachelor, Master,and MBA degrees, with a whole new approach. They have established campuses for students who want to complete their studies on site but also offer full programmes online for distance learning. The most recent development in their story: Eligible students can combine both online and on-campus studies and switch between the two on a semester basis. In this way, they enable you to develop on a personal and professional level and help advance your careers through future-oriented, flexible studies. 

IUBH makes careers in a global environment possible and welcomes students from all over the world. They prepare you for your international career with internationally relevant educational content and pay close attention to providing you with an international perspective for both, general management modules and subject-specific content. Their international mind-set prepares you, as the next generation of professionals, for global business. From the heart of Europe, straight to you!

Depending on your background, region, academic achievements, and more, there are many scholarships that students might be eligible for. Scholarship percentages vary for each individual situation, which could help you save up to 80% on your study costs.

Click here to apply:  http://bit.ly/3nkoVgy

MEET Africa Entrepreneurship Programme 2021 for diasporan Africans.

Application Deadline: February 28th 2021  MEET Africa Entrepreneurship Programme 2021 for diasporan Africans.

The MEET Africa program was born from an observation and a desire shared by two continents. Africa is a continent bubbling with potential and innovation and its European diaspora is a relay that is as dynamic as it is legitimat MEET Africa Entrepreneurship Programme 2021 for diasporan Africans.e.

The program is a continuation of actions carried out for years by the European Union and the Member States, in particular France and Germany, to promote the dynamics of wealth creation and jobs in Africa. Thus, we believe in the animation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem between this diaspora and European and African support actors.

TO BE ELIGIBLE

You are an entrepreneur from the African diaspora

Do you have the idea, do you want to? Sign up for MEET Africa support to obtain useful information concerning support:

150 projects at most will

be supported To be eligible, you must have a business project in Africa or in the dual space of Europe - Africa.

Objective: To transform an idea into a sustainable business project.

Meet Africa support offers several services:

- Become an active member of a network of entrepreneurs

- Know-how (support: the business model, drafting of the business plan and on all aspects relating to legal structuring, fundraising, etc.),

- Entrepreneurial skills (self-confidence, becoming a business leader)

Click here to apply: http://bit.ly/3kddnvH

Leventis Foundation Masters & MBA Scholarships 2021/2022 for Nigerian Students to Study in Greece (Fully Funded)

Alba Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece, and the A. G. Leventis Foundation offer for the academic year 2021-2022:… 

Deadline application: April 5 th, 2021 

Alba Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece and the A. G. Leventis Foundation offer for the academic year 2021-2022:

Two (2) full scholarships covering tuition (100%), accommodation (100%) and living expenses (250 euros per month for 12 months) for the Alba MBA program in Athens, Greece

One (1) full scholarship covering only tuition fees (100%) for the MSC in Finance program. Accommodation and living expenses will be covered by students' own funds.

The Alba Graduate Business School is an accredited research-oriented academic institution with international distinctions.

Click here to apply: http://bit.ly/2Nigfey

USA PRAISES PROGRESS IN FIGHT AGAINST CORRUPTION

 The US State Department praised the President of the Republic, João Lourenço, for the "impressive advances in the continuation of an anti-corruption agenda" and in the "fight against the power of elites" in the last two years.

According to Lusa news agency, in a report ANGOP had access on Thursday, for the US, the success of the presidency of João Lourenço is also reflected in the fight against state capture, in the denunciation and prosecution of former public officials and a new law to combat money laundering and terrorism financing.

This assessment by US authorities is part of a tender launched in Washington for projects to combat corruption in Angola with a USD1.3 million funding.

The projects in the tender, an initiative of the US State Department's Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, should demonstrate that they can "support the growth of Angolan civil society and independent media in increasing public awareness and support reforms for transparency and fighting corruption.

With this funding programme, it is intended that Angolan citizens will have greater knowledge of the anti-corruption reforms underway in the country, advocate for these transformations and, at the same time, civil society will gain greater capacity to investigate corruption with confidence.

On the other hand, the new US administration under President Joe Biden will "vigorously" assist the Angolan government in its fight against corruption, according to analyst Landry Signé of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based US think tank.

In a text published in Foreign Policy magazine, the analyst, quoted by the Voice of America, as saying that over the last decade Angola had been seen as "a classic example of the resource curse due to its failure to positively transform its economy.

Landry Signé asserts that João Lourenço government's fight against corruption "represents a huge opportunity for the US Treasury to get involved and vigorously help Angola recover assets and money stolen in previous corruption scandals - including those based in the United States - and prevent illicit financial moves in the future."

"The United States should be involved in Angola's anti-corruption campaign because it has wider implications both for other African countries and the rest of the world," the analyst wrote.

The analyst believes that Joe Biden could have an impact in the first year of his administration if he develops practical solutions to "critical challenges such as Sudan, Zambia, Mali and Angola," as well as implementing a new trade policy with Africa, given that the special tariff programme for African countries, the so-called African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), expires in 2025.

Since João Lourenço assumed the Angolan presidency, his anti-corruption policy has resulted in the recovery of movable and immovable assets and cash, estimated at billions of dollars.

Also as part of the fight against corruption, several cases have been tried, including those of the former Minister of Transport, Augusto Tomás, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sovereign Fund of Angola, José Filomeno dos Santos "Zenu", and the former governor of the National Bank of Angola, Valter Filipe.

Several other cases are on trial and others under investigation, throughout the country.

ANGOLAN OIL: SONANGOL’S NEW BOARD APPOINTED

 The Angolan President, João Lourenço, appointed last Thursday Olga Lukocheka da Silva Sabalo Miranda, Kátia Mariana Siliveli Epalanga Lutucuta and Osvaldo Inácio as executive directors of the country’s largest oil company, Sonangol.

The new managers replace Josina Marília Ngongo Mendes Baião, Luís Ferreira do Nascimento José Maria and Osvaldo Salvador de Lemos Macaia.

João Lourenço also appointed Bernarda Gonçalves Martins as non-executive director of the Angolan oil company, tin replacement of Marcolino José Carlos Moco, who was also dismissed.

‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

 Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.

Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.

For weeks, rumors circulated that something ghastly had occurred at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in late November, with estimates of several hundred people killed. But with Tigray cut off from the world and journalists blocked from entering, little could be verified as Ethiopian and allied fighters pursued the Tigray region’s fugitive leaders.

The deacon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains in Axum, said he helped count the bodies — or what was left after hyenas fed. He gathered victims’ identity cards and assisted with burials in mass graves.

He believes some 800 people were killed that weekend at the church and around the city, and that thousands in Axum have died in all. The killing continues: On the day he spoke to the AP last week he said he had buried three people.

“If we go to the rural areas, the situation is much worse,” the deacon said.

The atrocities of the Tigray conflict have occurred in the shadows. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea, announced the fighting as the world focused on the U.S. election. He accused Tigray’s regional forces, whose leaders dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades before he took office, of attacking the Ethiopian military. Tigray’s leaders called it self-defense after months of tensions.

While the world clamors for access to Tigray to investigate suspected atrocities on all sides and deliver aid to millions of hungry people, the prime minister has rejected outside “interference.” He declared victory in late November and said no civilians had been killed. His government denies the presence of thousands of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the Tigray leaders.

Ethiopia’s narrative, however, has crumbled as witnesses like the deacon emerge. The foreign ministry on Thursday acknowledged that “rape, plunder, callous & intentional mass killings” could occur in a conflict where “many are illegally armed.” Its statement blamed Tigray forces for leaving the region “vulnerable” and said any serious offense will be investigated. It did not mention Eritrean soldiers.

Axum, with its ancient ruins and churches, holds major significance for the Ethiopian Orthodox faithful, who believe that the Ark of the Covenant, built to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, is located there.

“If you attack Axum, you attack first of all the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” said Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian who specializes in the region. “Axum itself is regarded as a church in the local tradition, ‘Axum Zion.’”

In a normal year, thousands of people would have gathered at the Zion church in late November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought thereafter it disappeared from Jerusalem in ancient times.

Instead, the church had become a refuge for people who fled the fighting elsewhere in Tigray. They sheltered there as worship services were underway two days before the anniversary.

Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers had arrived in Axum more than a week earlier, with heavy bombardment. But on Nov. 28 the Eritrean soldiers returned in force to hunt down members of the local militia who had mobilized against them in Axum and nearby communities.

The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled.

 

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)

Black History Month Is a Good Excuse for Delving Into Our Art

 Black History Month feels more urgent this year. Its roots go back to 1926, when the historian Carter G. Woodson developed Negro History Week, near the February birthdays of both President Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, in the belief that new stories of Black life could counter old racist stereotypes. Now in this age of racial reckoning and social distancing, our need to connect with each other has never been greater.

As a professor of African-American studies, I am increasingly animated by the work of teachers who have updated Woodson’s goal for the 21st century. Just this week, my 8-year-old daughter showed me a letter written by her entire 3rd-grade art class to Faith Ringgold, the 90-year-old African-American artist. And my son told me about a recent pre-K lesson on Ruby Bridges, the first African-American student who, at 6, integrated an elementary school in the South. Suddenly, the conversations my kids have at home with my husband and me are the ones they’re having in their classrooms. It’s not just their history that belongs in all these spaces, but their knowledge, too.

Our stake in having a shared understanding of the past is as crucial today as it was in Woodson’s time. And because of greater efforts to integrate Black history across so many industries and institutions, I remain hopeful that what was once a week, and now a month, will soon become our way of life.

If you saw Sam Pollard’s recent documentary, “Black Art: In the Absence of Light” on HBO, you’d be reminded of David Driskell’s exceptional role as a champion, curator and creator of African-American art over the last half century. Inspired by Driskell’s landmark exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art,” which opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976, the film surveys African-American contributions to art, while also making the case for its central role in American culture today.

“David Driskell: Icons of Nature and History” is another type of tribute, the first major survey of his work since he died of the coronavirus, at 88, last year. Pulling from his personal estate and private and museum collections, the exhibition features over 60 works, including his 1956 painting “Behold Thy Son,” a visual elegy to Emmett Till, and homages to Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence, two giants in the pantheon of American art to which Driskell now firmly belongs.

Hosted and produced by Henry Louis Gates Jr., this four-hour, two-part docu-series is a sweeping yet intimate portrait of a collective, the Black Church. Though the term might suggest this is a single religion or institution, the documentary quickly dispels such myths by exploring the varied beliefs the first African-American Christians, many of whom were forced to convert during slavery, had while retaining Yoruba or Muslim spiritual practices, brought with them from West Africa.

By 1794, when Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States, these institutions not only became leaders in the antislavery movement but also safe spaces where African-Americans could gather and worship beyond the white gaze. Gates, who also wrote the accompanying book “The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song,” guides us through that history, but he also gets personal. The series opens with him singing “I Believe I’ll Go Back Home,” a gospel song he grew up with.

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Kip Sturm and Tai Jimenez in a 2003 performance of “NEW BACH” for the Dance Theatre of HarlemCredit…Joseph Rodman

One of my favorite virtual experiences this month has been watching the Dance Theater of Harlem’s most iconic performances, such as the founder Arthur Mitchell’s 1988 “John Henry,” a ballet tribute in honor of the artist-activist Paul Robeson and Robert Garland’s “New Bach,” a 2001 tribute to both George Balanchine and African-American social dances like the Harlem Shake.

In 1982, PBS aired “Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ by Dance Theatre of Harlem,” a thrilling behind-the-scenes documentary of the premiere of this “Firebird,” choreographed by John Taras In 1982, PBS aired “Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ by Dance Theatre of Harlem,” a thrilling behind-the-scenes documentary of the premiere of this “Firebird,” choreographed by John Taras and costumed by Geoffrey Holder. Set to the original Stravinsky score, the magical, glowing Firebird of the Russian folk tale is transported to a mythical Caribbean island here, and this geographical swap turns the dance into a vibrant, mesmerizing and unforgettable performance.and costumed by Geoffrey Holder. Set to the original Stravinsky score, the magical, glowing Firebird of the Russian folk tale is transported to a mythical Caribbean island here, and this geographical swap turns the dance into a vibrant, mesmerizing and unforgettable performance.

NASA’s fifth Mars rover, Perseverance, makes historic landing

 NASA’s science rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely on the floor of a vast crater, its first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet.

Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles burst into applause and cheers as radio signals confirmed that the six-wheeled rover had survived its perilous descent and arrived within its target zone inside Jezero Crater, site of a long-vanished Martian lake bed.

The robotic vehicle sailed through space for nearly seven months, covering 472 million km (293 million miles) before piercing the Martian atmosphere at 19,000 km an hour (12,000 miles per hour) to begin its approach to touchdown on the planet’s surface.

The spacecraft’s self-guided descent and landing during a complex series of manoeuvres that NASA dubbed “the seven minutes of terror” stands as the most elaborate and challenging feat in the annals of robotic spaceflight.

“This is a sign: NASA works, NASA works,” Rob Manning, chief engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said moments after the landing. “And we put our arms together, and our hands together, and our brains together, we can succeed. This is what NASA does, this is what we can do as a country.”

The landing represented the riskiest part of two-year, $2.7bn endeavour whose primary aim is to search for possible fossilised signs of microbes that may have flourished on Mars some three billion years ago, when the fourth planet from the sun was warmer, wetter and potentially hospitable to life.

Scientists hope to find biosignatures embedded in samples of ancient sediments that Perseverance is designed to extract from Martian rock for future analysis back on Earth – the first such specimens ever collected by humans from another planet.

Two subsequent Mars missions are planned to retrieve the samples and return them to NASA in the next decade.

Thursday’s landing came as a triumph for a pandemic-weary United States in the grips of economic dislocation caused by the COVID-19 public health crisis.

“What an amazing team to work through all the adversity and challenges that go with landing a rover on Mars, plus the challenges of COVID,” said acting NASA Administrator Steve Jurczyk.

Search for ancient life

NASA scientists have described Perseverance as the most ambitious of nearly 20 US missions to Mars dating back to the Mariner spacecraft’s 1965 fly-by.

Larger and packed with more instruments than the four Mars rovers preceding it, Perseverance is set to build on previous findings that liquid water once flowed on the Martian surface and that carbon and other minerals altered by water and considered precursors to the evolution of life were present.

Perseverance’s payload also includes demonstration projects that could help pave the way for eventual human exploration of Mars, including a device to convert the carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere into pure oxygen.

The box-shaped tool, the first built to extract a natural resource of direct use to humans from an extraterrestrial environment, could prove invaluable for future human life support on Mars and for producing rocket propellant to fly astronauts home.

Another experimental prototype Perseverance carried is a miniature helicopter designed to test the first powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. If successful, the 1.8-kg (four-pound) helicopter could lead to low-altitude aerial surveillance of distant worlds, officials said.

The daredevil nature of the rover’s descent to the Martian surface, at a site that NASA described as both tantalising to scientists and especially hazardous for landing, was a momentous achievement in itself.

The multi-stage spacecraft carrying the rover soared into the top of Martian atmosphere at nearly 16 times the speed of sound on Earth, angled to produce aerodynamic lift while jet thrusters adjusted its trajectory.

A jarring, supersonic parachute inflation further slowed the descent, giving way to deployment of a rocket-powered “sky crane” vehicle that flew to a safe landing spot, lowered the rover on tethers, then flew off to crash a safe distance away.

Perseverance’s immediate predecessor, the rover Curiosity, landed in 2012 and remains in operation, as does the stationary lander InSight, which arrived in 2018 to study the deep interior of Mars.

Last week, separate probes launched by the United Arab Emirates and China reached Martian orbit. NASA has three Mars satellites still in orbit, along with two from the European Space Agency.

UN chief backs new blueprint to end ‘suicidal’ war on nature

 A new scientific blueprint for tackling climate change, pollution and the accelerating loss of plant and animal species shows how to end the world’s “suicidal” war on nature, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said.

“Humanity is waging war on nature. This is senseless and suicidal,” Guterres wrote in the preface of the United Nations Environment Programme report published on Thursday.

“The consequences of our recklessness are already apparent in human suffering, towering economic losses and the accelerating erosion of life on Earth,” he said.

Guterres also said that the climate emergency, the biodiversity crisis and the pollution kill millions of people every year and have left the planet broken.

“But [the report] also guides us to a safer place by providing a peace plan and a post-war rebuilding programme.”

The recommendations

Among the recommendations was that more than $5 trillion in annual subsidies to sectors such as fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, fishing and mining should be redirected to accelerate a shift to a low-carbon future and restore nature.

Governments should also look beyond economic growth as an indicator of performance and take account of the value of preserving ecosystems, the report said.

It aimed to encourage governments to take more ambitious steps at a UN climate conference in Glasgow in November and during parallel talks to agree upon a new global pact on preserving biodiversity.

With countries launching economic recovery packages in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the authors hoped their policy prescriptions would encourage more coordinated action to rapidly transform destructive industrial and financial systems.

Robert Watson, lead author of the report, told Al Jazeera that there were “vested interests” that were stopping action.

“We have subsidies for agriculture, for energy, for fossil fuels that are perverse. They encourage the use of fossil fuels. They encourage the use of bad agricultural practices,” he said.

“If we can get the business community to work with governments around the world, I’m optimistic we can start to move in the right direction,” Watson said.

“I think that most governments do realise that climate change is adversely affecting food security, water security, human health and poverty alleviation.”

The report highlighted what report co-author Rachel Warren of the University of East Anglia called “a litany of frightening statistics that hasn’t really been brought together”:

• Earth is on the way to an additional 1.9C (3.5 degrees Fahrenheit) warming from now, far more than the internationally agreed-upon goals in the Paris accord.

• About nine million people a year die from pollution.

• About one million of Earth’s eight million species of plants and animals are threatened with extinction.

• Up to 400 million tonnes of heavy metals, toxic sludge and other industrial waste are dumped into the world’s waters every year.

• More than three billion people are affected by land degradation, and only 15 percent of Earth’s wetlands remain intact.

• About 60 percent of fish stocks are fished at the maximum levels. There are more than 400 oxygen-depleted “dead zones” and marine plastics pollution has increased tenfold since 1980.

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES, REUTERS

Africa COVID deaths surpass 100,000 amid second wave

 Africa’s reported COVID-19 death toll has surpassed 100,000, a fraction of those reported on other continents but rising fast as the second wave of infections overwhelms hospitals.

The continent’s reported deaths, at 100,354 on Friday, are less than North America’s – at more than half a million – and Europe’s which is approaching 900,000, a Reuters tally shows.

But deaths are rising sharply across Africa, driven by its southern region, especially in the economic powerhouse of South Africa, which accounts for nearly half of the total. South Africa was ravaged by a second wave caused by a more contagious variant that has jammed up casualty wards.

“The increased number (of infections) has led to many severe cases and some of the countries really found it quite difficult to cope,” Dr Richard Mihigo, the coordinator of the immunisation programme at the World Health Organization’s Africa office, told the Reuters news agency.

“We have seen some countries getting to their limit in terms of oxygen supply, which has got a really negative impact in terms of case management for severe cases.”

Mihigo said the rise in deaths was pronounced in countries near South Africa such as Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi, raising the possibility that the 501Y V2 variant identified in South Africa late last year had spread through the southern Africa region – although more genomic sequencing needs to be carried out.

International aid group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) this month called for urgent vaccine distributions in southern Africa to counter the spread of the new variant, as most African countries have lagged behind richer Western nations in launching mass vaccination programmes.

Reuters’ data show Africa’s case fatality rate is now at about 2.6 percent, higher than the global average of 2.3 percent and marginally up on the 2.4 percent rate after the first wave of infections. At that time, Africa compared favourably with other continents.

Experts caution against reading too much into the data as the real toll could be much higher or lower. For instance, South Africa’s excess deaths – deaths considered over-and-above the normal rate during the pandemic have reached more than 137,000, almost three times its official COVID-19 death toll.

Then again, in some cases Africa’s low testing rates could inflate its true case fatality rate (CFR), said Francisca Mutapi, an infectious disease expert at the University of Edinburgh.

“If deaths being registered as COVID-19 deaths are not necessarily contingent on a positive test … as is the case in South Africa, then this can drive up CFR,” she said.

Even with these caveats, African countries appear to be struggling with COVID-19 more this year than it did previously.

“Are we counting all the deaths on the continent? No … but most people on the continent do know somebody who has died of COVID during this second wave,” Africa CDC Director John Nkengasong told reporters last week.

“Hospitals are being overwhelmed due to health systems that are fragile.”